This was a busy day. First stop after leaving Inverness was the Loch Ness Visitor Center located on the north side of Loch Ness. There is an excellent exhibition there that walks you through the history of the legendary monster, its folklore and the various research projects carried out on the loch. We were not able to spend enough time there on this stop for anyone to take full advantage of it, but I did want to give it a plug here because Nicky, Matthew and I spent several hours wandering through it 1995 and enjoyed it immensely. It gets a little scientific, but if you are into this kind of thing you learn a lot about Loch Ness and how unique it is geologically.

There was of course a gift shop, a prime attraction to this group of travelers and judging by the amount of shopping bags and parcels that were loaded onto the bus as we left, I suspect that the owner's left on holiday to some exotic destination as soon as our buses were out of sight. Across the highway are the ruins of Urquart Castle but since a very busy day was already planned we could not stop. However the tour operators being the accomodating folks that they were, promised to bring those people who were interesting in exploring them back later.

The next stop was at the Culloden Battlefield. One of the curators offered to give a guided tour of the battlefield and many of the members of the tour took him up on it. I have been here before with Nicky and Matthew in 1995 and realised then that the battlefield is best explored on your own and away from other visitors. I was delighted this time to have the opportunity to do this. This is one of the most haunting sites in all of Scotland, as it was here on this ground in 1746 that the Jacobite cause fell at the hands of the British. It is a very strange and eerie place and if you walk along the path and are very quiet, you can feel the essence of the place seep into you. This is a place of much sadness. As I stood at the fringe of the field I could almost hear the heartbeat of the drums and the cries of the higlanders, who armed with little more than their courage, as they stood, cold, hungry, and ill-equipped and prepared themselves for the battle they would fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie and disastrously lose. I am sure that I have Diana Gabaldon to thank for these mental images since it was in her book, Dragonfly in Amber that the Battle of Culloden came alive for me. I wandered around until my feet finally insisted that I go back inside. Inside the center they have a tea room and a small theatre where they show a reinactment of battle so I opted to watch the film as an excuse to sit down for a while

Next stop down the road was Clava Cairns, one of the best preserved Bronze Age burial sites in Scotland. Here is a link to some very excellent photographs of the site. Clava Cairns If you look in the background of the last picture you can see a cleft stone. One of the members of the tour took a picture of Diana there and I think Diana used it on the cover of the Companion book. I am not sure because I have the UK version, Through the Stones which has a different cover.

But the next stop down the road was Brodie Castle and it was one of the highlights of the whole tour for me. Brodie Castle. When you enter the castle, immediately on your right is the Library. The first thing that flew into my mind when I walked into the room was, AHA, so this is where the butler killed Colonel Mustard with the candlestick. It was just one of those Clue kinds of rooms. We were escorted through the rooms that were open to the public by a tour guide person who gave a lot of history. I remember that in the master bedroom she gave a rather chilling account of how the wife of one of the previous lords was sitting next to the fireplace when a hot ember from the fire popped out and landed on her dress and she burned to death in that very room. We also got an interesting tour of the nursery suite on the top floor. My friend Karona says that she remembers the guide was quite proud of the fact that the Brodies of the past didn't support the Bonnie Prince or take part in the uprising and thereby, retained their holdings.

After the tour there was "Musicale" in the Drawing Room. All the furniture that you see in the photo of the Drawing Room in the link I provided was pushed back and arranged so that everyone could be seated facting forward towards the bay windows. The entertainers were obviously a group of local citizens who had put this program together for some sort of charitable event that we were told about but I have forgotten. They were absolutely awful. They were so awful that I think it�s probably one of the most delightful performances I have ever seen. Each person recited a poem set to music provided by a piano player. That was it! But they were so charming about it and performed the whole thing with such aplomb that I was simply enchanted.

The organizer of this tour, is an American woman named Catherine Faulk I believe. She had written and asked everyone who was signing up for the tour to bring a bottle of wine that had been produced in their home state. After this performance she presented the Brodie of Brodie with all the wine as a thank you for his hospitality. Poor man. I have always wondered since what he did with all that wine. I�ll bet he donated it to a local jumble sale.

When the tour returned to Inverness, some of the members of the tour went to view the Urquart Ruins. Not I! I went and had one last long soak in that marvelous bathtud. This was our last night in Inverness and I hated to think about leaving that bathtub. But life goes on.

The next morning we had a few hours to spend puttering around Inverness. After getting my luggage all in order and set out in the hall for the porters to load on the bus I had a leisurely breakfast and then wandered down into town. I spent most of the morning poking around in the covered shopping arcade, browsing through the bookstore, buying stamps at the Post Office for my post cards, that kind of stuff.